Tuesday, August 14, 2007

CUPE: 50 Ways To Evade Your Secretary

[photo: Paul Faoro, CUPE 15]

The problem is all inside your headCUPE attorney Aikenhead has saidThe answer is easy if youTake it logicallyI’d like to help you in your struggleTo be freeThere must be fifty waysTo evade your secretary.Aikenhead said it’s really not my habitTo intrudeFurthermore, I hope my meaningWon’t be lost or misconstruedBut I’ll repeat myselfAt the risk of being crudeThere must be fifty waysTo evade your secretaryFifty ways to evade your secretary

CHORUS:

Screen out her voice, MoistCall the cops to make a deal, O'NeillJust step out for air, SinclairPut her off 'til tomorrow, FaoroStay within the faction, JacksonPretend you never heard, YoungbergAnd get yourself free

Paul Faoro, President of CUPE 15, has claimed on the "Fairness for Civic Workers" website that the City has met with workers for less than seven hours over a total of eight days.

"That's more time than CUPE has given me in five years," says a former secretary to two CUPE Presidents.

When the secretary attempted to get CUPE to take responsibility for operating a "non-union sweatshop" inside Local 116, CUPE avoided speaking to her and asked the unionized Vancouver Police to muzzle her. In Dec. 2002, Constables Herrmann and Ng -- who don't have jurisdiction at Local 116, in the endowment lands policed by the RCMP -- ordered her to muzzle herself about labour practices at CUPE Local 116. The secretary wants CUPE to take responsibility for using what she calls "everything but brass knuckles" intimidation tactics. CUPE has evaded speaking to the secretary about her case for 4 1/2 years.

It is the secretary's position that CUPE 15 and other Locals became involved in this case the day letters addressed to President Barry O'Neill of CUPE BC, President Jim Sinclair of the BC Fed, and CUPE National, were passed off to police as "evidence". In fact, due to the role played by Jim Sinclair and the BC Federation of Labour, it is her position that this case has now become the responsibility of all unions funding the BC Fed.

The secretary recently noticed CUPE National President, Paul Moist, reassuring striking Vancouver civic workers of their right to "fairness". So she asked him to, in the interest of fairness, ensure that CUPE resolved her case.

6 comments:

You might not be fair in this criticism of CUPE. Look at it this way: If they are on strike for a fair increase in wages and benefits, then they must also be working hard to ensure that those who work along side them, those for example working at the Carnegie Centre, are also going to benefit in the raise in wages and benefits. If CUPE is demanding an increase of say 17 per cent in wages, then they're probably also working to get the 'volunteers' at the Carnegie Centre a 17 percent increase in the $0.80 per hour food stamps they get. Fair is fair, right? Let's not forget the increase the 'volunteers' will get for all the efforts of their Brothers and Sisters suffering on their behalf in the labour movement.

Yes, I feel both sorry for the poor CUPE members having to stop work, and I feel proud of the fact that the 'poor' stand shoulder to shoulder with their unionized brothers and sisters fighting the capitalist exploiters of City Hall so the poor will get that 17 per cent increase in their food stamps for working alongside the unionized CUPE people. It's enough to bring tears to my eyes.

No, you heartless bastard, I'm not laughing. I'm shedding real tears of sorrow over the unfairness of it all. Look at me, if you will. I'm weeping, see?

Sob. I sob.

No, really. Watch how I sob. I've been practicing front of the mirror and I'm almost as good at it as Libby Davies and Stephen Lewis.

While I agree to a certain extent with DAG as to the need of some unions, I think that they have outlived their purposeness and aren't needed as they were long ago. This isn't about earning a decent wage or safer working conditions anymore. Yes, they did help implement many of these things in the past, but we also have laws in place to keep us safe at work now (stop laughing!). Is it just me or is there something wrong with a person earning $20 an hour or more for doing a job that you could train a chimpanzee to do?

Uh, I'm as smart as a chimpanzee. I'd also like to earn $20.00 per hours. But even if I'm only half as smart as a chimpanzee I think I should be able to get $10.00 per hours for something the chimp standing next to me gets $20.00 per hour for.

Now, if I were working beside a chimpanzee and he's making $20.00 per hour for the same job I'm making $0.80 per hour doing, well, excuse my stupidity, but isn't the chimp getting my wage and his as well while I get nearly nothing?

OK, so I wasn't born into a chimpanzee family and I can't ask my uncle to get me into the chimp union. Still, is it somehow right that the chimp goes out on strike for yet more money and greater "benefits" while I remain with the $0.80 per hour in food stamps I was getting before this?

Hey, wait a minute! Why would I want to be grateful for a 30 per cent increase in food stamps while the chimp is getting 30 per cent in money and services? What is it that makes a chimp more human than I? It don't seem fair. All I'd ask for is a little fairness, you know. All I'd ask for is that if I do the same work a chimp does that I get the same wage and benefits, union or not, given that I can't live if they won't show up to work along side me. It doesn't seem fair.

When Adam hung out and Eve sat around, who then was a union member? Hey, weren't we all born equal? Why do chimps get all theirs and mine too? What makes them more equal than me? It doesn't seem fair, though admittedly I might only be half as smart as a chimpanzee. Then again, I don't have to be even that smart to figure out something here really stinks. And it just ain't fair.

The "volunteers" at Carnegie are starting to wake up to the fact that CUPE members don't give a flying fuck about them. I'm hearing rumblings amongst the "volunteers" working along side CUPE members for 80 cents an hour in food vouchers, that they too would like an increase. Even one extra ticket an hour would be nice, I heard one guy say. But even though CUPE shut down these people's jobs (in a 5-week welfare month when people are particularly short of food) as leverage to get a pay increase for CUPE members, they are unlikely to do anything for these "volunteers".

With all their talk of "fairness" and their "Fairness for Civic Workers" website, CUPE is leaving the entire slave class that works alongside them behind. But when CUPE members return after the strike, that slave class will be doing much of the work at Carnegie.